Wednesday, 1 August 2018

The Working Mother - what it's really like

Working Mums

There are a lot of things you don’t find
out about motherhood until after you’re committed to this child birth/baby
thing. I have been in the thick of this many times thinking – why the hell
didn’t anyone tell me it was going to be like this?

Like, how much is labour going to hurt? Well
hot damn, nobody could have quite prepared me for that level of excruciating,
vagina tearing pain.

But hey, I survived. If you want to know
what it’s really going to feel like, come chat to me. Oh, and just so you know,
you don’t actually forget what it feels like. That’s just another story we get
told, BUT it is totally worth it and I 100% would not change a thing about the
delivery of my babies, except maybe the 26-hour labour with Josie.

Ever since I became a mother I decided to
never lie about what it was actually like because I really felt like, had I
known, MAYBE I may have been more prepared. So, if someone asks me, they get
the truth. I also recognise that as mothers we don’t want to necessarily let on
how hard we are finding this motherhood journey for fear of looking like a
failure.

Or for fear of being judged.

Screw that, if you want to honestly know
the ins and outs of what it’s going to be like, come chat to me. Disclaimer – I
may turn you off having kids forever.

However, I wouldn’t change the gifts it’s
given me for the world. My kids are my life and I love them more than I ever
imagined possible, but here’s my blog on what it’s REALLY like to be a working
mother, with a few quotes thrown in from some of the mums in my Mums Who Lift community at Ritual HQ.

I remember thinking, before having
children, that once they were ‘out’ I would be able to work from home and raise
my babies. I had visions of me sitting calmly at my desk while my baby slept
angelically in a cot beside me with gentle music playing.

In my mind I was going to have a roaringly
successful Personal Training Business while nursing my baby. Then, after six or
so months I was going to head back to my job at the bank full time and it was
all going to be fine.

I couldn’t have had this more wrong if I
tried.

What quickly became apparent to me was that
I urgently had to redefine what success looked like. Success no longer looked
like me strutting off to my city job with my six-figure income, stilettos and
pencil skirt, and immaculate hair and make-up. Success was now getting to midday
and managing to go to the toilet and take a dump without a baby screaming from
another room (or managing to do this without taking the baby with me in their Baby
Bjorn carrier because they can’t be put down that day). Maybe throwing toast in
my mouth (because you can hold toast in your mouth while breast feeding a baby
and juggling at least one other task) and MAYBE brushing my hair.

If I was really having a good day, I might
even manage to get out of my pyjamas and – wait for it – put on a bra! Nobody
told me that whilst breast feeding is absolutely beautiful and an incredible
thing to do for your baby and their health, it is actually very challenging (for
some of us it hurts like HELL in the early days) and will consume hours of your
day. I recall one witching hour feed lasting nearly two hours. Oh, and witching
hour is another term I had never heard of. This is the time around dusk when
babies turn crazy. Fact.

Without redefining success, the feeling of
failure was imminent, and this came regardless. On a good day, the thought of
taking on any kind of intellectual work was so far from my mind because the
fatigue from sleep deprivation would swamp me like a dark wet blanket. Did you
know that sleep deprivation was used as a form of torture by the CIA as part of
their interrogation techniques? I can confirm this would work.

Daycare is certainly an option and one I
indulged in after the first year. But we need to be realistic about the cost of
daycare (whilst factoring in the cost of your sanity). At one stage, my income
was only JUST covering the daycare fees.

For me these days, now that my children are
no longer babies, a successful morning is managing to get both kids to school
with their hair brushed and shoes on both feet…on time. An extra successful day
is when I manage to brush my own hair. I don’t always have successful days!
Even now.

One of my mums in my Mums Who Lift community sums this up beautifully – the guilt, plus
the mornings, plus the juggling act. Amelia says:

“I feel like
most of my parenting stress is trying to leave the house for a specific time x
100 when you have to leave the house to get to work and they don’t want to get out of bed let alone get ready.

“I can never stay late at work to finish something like I used to as I
have to get home to pick them up. I feel guilty during school hols because they
go to holiday care and then feel I need to arrange stuff for us to do on my
days off when actually they probably need a boring day resting at home (they whinged,
fought and complained all day Monday at the activity I’d planned for them).

“The days I work I feel like we’re all
on a conveyor belt with not enough time to get dinner in, showers, homework and
some reading before bed. And I only work three days and have a partner (I have
no family here though). I can’t
imagine what fulltime and single parents have to deal with.”

My two are regulars at my workplace,mostly out of necessity

These days, I do somehow manage to run two
businesses, manage a team of nine, hold a relationship together, manage a
separated parenting arrangement and seem to have two relatively well balanced
kids, albeit extremely busy kids! But like all of us mums who work excessive
hours and manage kids, it comes at a cost and for many of us it is precious
time with our kids. I know I have missed a lot of time with my children, however I do have some non-negotiables that ensure the quality is always there.

We also had to learn to work at a level of
speed and precision we never imagined possible. Time management skills needed
to go to another level and we had to accept that down time or rest time was a
luxury that no longer existed. And if you seek this kind of time to yourself, resentment mounts. The other thing I didn’t realise is the pressure
that compounds your day when your kids go to school. Suddenly you have a
thousand letters to read, music lessons, extra tests, parent teacher
interviews, newsletters to absorb, parenting apps, parent reps, volunteering
activities, fetes and play dates to navigate. Oh, and birthday parties. Nobody
prepared me for this, or the pressure of school holidays, but that’s another
blog.

I have been lucky enough to integrate my work intothe kid's school so I can be more present for them ina more creative way.

Single mum Lisa explains her world and how
it has played out now that her children are a little older:

“I learned that
I can’t do it all, and
I was going to fail everywhere unless I reframed. I was lucky enough to buy
extra annual leave for holidays for a few years – and then had one week per
hols with them. That was my bargaining chip for holiday/before/after school
care. And they were fine with this deal. And I gave up on giving a shit what
anyone thought.

“I’ve worked stupid
hours for so long but despite a few horrors (armed burglar in the house with my
son whilst I’m at work,
occasionally forgetting to pick them up or where I had left them, and regularly not getting home
til they’re in bed). I
also found the bloody joy in watching them look after each other and learn to
help me run a house.

“And all my
guilt about having to juggle 80-hour weeks and single parenting whilst on a
massive IT project was washed away when just weeks ago I apologised to them for
my long work hours when they were little, and they both had no idea what I was
talking about!! No memory of my absence!!!! This is forgiveness for sure!!!!”

Interestingly, despite discovering all of
these things along the way that I had wish I had known, I can now laugh at my
naivety. I also know that there is nothing you can say to a mum to be to
prepare them for any of this. If a mum had tried to warn me about all of this,
I would have nodded, smiled and thought to myself, “yes, but it won’t be like
that for me.”

And here is one final thing nobody prepared
me for – the depth of love I feel for my children. This hit me harder than
anything I could have ever imagined. Every time one of my children gets on
stage to dance or sing or play an instrument, or hit the sporting field to do
something, I literally weep. Nothing prepared me for the fear I would feel
watching one of them cross the road for the first time, or the mumma bear
instinct I would experience when my child got picked on at school or how much I
would miss cuddling my tiny babies now that they were bigger, despite those
years being some of my hardest years. Nothing prepares you for any of this and
I guess this is probably a good thing. Because had I known how hard it was
going to be I would have missed out on the unconditional love I give and
receive now every day from these two tiny humans.